The U.S. Middle East Challenge

Why did the Arab revolts in many Middle Eastern countries completely take the U.S. by surprise? Too often for decades Arab nations have ruled with an iron fist, abusing the rights of man for their own self serving interests. Of all the regions of the world, why is it that the Middle East ranks at the bottom of the "Freedom Index."

In 2003, President George Bush posed these questions; "Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men, women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone, never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?

Many of these Arab leaders played a duplicitous policy as they dealt with the U.S., by advocating its either us or the Islamists. The U.S. consistently feared a repeat of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power.

The results of the past week have sent U.S. foreign policy, as it relates to the Middle East, into a tailspin. President Obama had repudiated the policy of the Bush administration by engaging with these despot leaders with an outstretched hand, only to have it bitten by many of these regimes.

The president's policy has placed the U.S. in a precarious situation, even his administration's actions were confusing in the initial days by supporting the regimes, and only now has the president begun to change his policy.

The president and his national security apparatus need a better coherent strategy as it move forward in the Middle East.

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